The company, headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, owns six of the top twelve fresh bread brands in the United States, including Entenmann's, Sara Lee, and Thomas'. It is also a top advertising sponsor for many major soccer teams around the globe.
The name Bimbo was first coined in 1945 when the company switched from Super Pan S.A. A blend of the words bingo and Bambi, the name's innocent, childlike associations fit the image that the company wished to build. The English word bimbo, with its negative connotations implying a woman of loose morals, has no cognate in Spanish.
Grupo Bimbo entered the U.S. market with the purchase of Pacific Pride Bakeries in 1986. At the time, Pacific Pride Bakeries was the largest independent baker in the San Diego area. The current company, Bimbo Bakeries USA, was established in 1998 when Grupo Bimbo purchased Mrs. Baird's Bakeries in Texas, which at the time was the largest family-owned bakery in the United States, and merged it with the former Pacific Pride Bakeries. At this point, it was renamed Bimbo Bakeries USA and U.S. headquarters were set up in Fort Worth, Texas. In 2002, Grupo Bimbo made another acquisition when it purchased five plants in California, Texas, Colorado, and Oregon. The purchase also gave Bimbo Bakeries USA the right to such brands as Oroweat, Entenmann's, Thomas', and Boboli in the western United States (the rights in the eastern USA at the time were owned by George Weston Limited).
In 2016, Forbes magazine ranked Grupo Bimbo at #986 on the Forbes Global 2000, an annual ranking of the top 2,000 public companies in the world.
